


Thank You for Flying

by Anna__S



Category: Farscape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-09
Updated: 2014-06-09
Packaged: 2018-02-03 23:37:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1759773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anna__S/pseuds/Anna__S
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which TJohn lives, Aeryn can't forgive, and Braca wears a tux.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thank You for Flying

**Author's Note:**

> Set sometime post Dog with Two Bones. Originally posted in 2003.

The module sits perched on the mouth of the wormhole. I take a deep breath and push the controls forward.   
  
As the view through the window is filled by a sea of swirling blue, I understand for the first time what the laundry must feel like. The drinks are free, but Air Wormhole still has some kinks to work out.   
  
Chiana leans her head onto my shoulder. "How are we doing?" she asks.   
  
I'm opening my mouth to reply when the module jerks forward and the controls start shaking. I tighten my grip as we lurch forward into blue--- 

  
\--I wake to find myself staring at myself. The other guy is sitting cross-legged on the floor, and even though most of him is concealed by shadow, I can feel his gaze on my face.   
  
I swing my feet onto the floor, using my hands to steady myself as a wave of nausea overtakes me. He doesn't move.   
  
"What the hell are you doing here?" I ask, irritated, tasting bile.  

  
He shrugs. "D'Argo locked the door."  
  
"Did you try calling for him?"   
  
"What do you think?" he asks. He stands up and moves forward and for the first time I can see that he's got a nasty shiner to match the fist marks on my stomach.   
  
"And?" I prompt.   
  
"He said until we can work together without killing each other, he doesn't want to deal with us."   
  
"You think he'd be grateful I gave you that black eye. Now he can finally tell us apart."   
  
I take a step on my own and when the world doesn't immediately turn black, I hobble over to the door and test my weight against it. I’m pretty sure he's telling the truth, but you never know, he might be screwing with my head just for the hell of it. He wouldn't be the first.   
  
"My idea of fun isn't spending more time with you," he says. I ignore him and pull out Winona. Shooting the door might not have worked for Chewbacca, but then it's always been one of my greatest grievances that the laws of my world and Star Wars aren't more closely related.   
  
He knocks Winona out of my hand with a sharp slap that echoes through the room.  
  
"Don't bother, I already tried," he says.   
  
I'm about to reply when I notice the bruises sealed into the side of his neck. Bruises exactly the size and shape of my fingers.   
  
"Why didn't you kill me?" he asks when my eyes drop.   
  
"I wouldn't be able to look dad in the face," I reply, although that's only partly true. There's a difference between resenting his existence and being able to kill him in cold blood. It was my neck that my hands were squeezing, my eyes that were glossing over with pain.

I understood for the first time in that moment why suicide victims always have hesitation marks. Your own skin is something precious, even when it's not. 

"Still," he says. "This is a hell of a way to live. Waiting for one of us to finally bite it."  
  
"Is that really how you see it?"  
  
"Either that or some sick nightmare. How else can you think of it?"  
  
"I'm just counting the days until Aeryn gets back."   
  
"You think it'll be any different then? That we're gonna take turns with her like we do with Winona? Wake up and smell the alien goo, Crichton. We're the only people who can tell the difference between us."   
  
"You're not telling me anything new," I say in a light tone, although what I mean is, you can't tell me anything new.   
  
"I'd rather have her here anyway, though," he continues and I don’t have to ask him why. When D’Argo said he was sure that Crais would take care of her, that Crais had always been fond of Aeryn, I flung my chess board into the wall.  
  
Nightmares of the Aurora chair have been replaced by nightmares of them alone on Talyn, Crais' lips pressed against her skin, Crais' pistol pressed against her skull. I close my eyes, feel my hands twitching against my sides. Harvey laughs. "Give it up, John. Crais is more like her than you’ll ever be."   
  
"You're wrong, Harvey," I say out loud and John says it half a beat after me. As always, there are too many creatures sharing one brain. He is me and I am him, and we can't stand to breathe the same air. 

I know, and he knows that the fight was just the first step. Everything in us rebels against this notion of shared lives and eventually, not even the fact that it's my skin I’m tearing to shreds will matter.   
  
Not now, when neither of us have anything worth having. But he’s right. When Aeryn returns, that will cease to be true. And between Aeryn Sun and John Crichton, John Crichton will always pick Aeryn Sun.  
  
He smiles suddenly and if I weren't giving him the same smile, it would make my skin crawl. He tosses Winona back to me. ‘It's still your week," he says. "Why don't we try that door again and see if we can get D's attention."   
  
I fire off two blasts and the door shakes before it starts to turn blue, giving way to a wormhole-- 

  
  
"John!" screams Chiana. "What the frell is happening, Crichton?"   
  
I try to find the controls, but everything is spinning and the world disappears again--

  
  
\---Flashing light bulbs surround us the second we leave the limo. I ward the reporters off with my hands, but it's Aeryn's irritated glare that makes them back off. There's nothing quite like having an ex-stone cold killer for a girlfriend.   
  
Through the crowd, I spy a flash of Scorpius' face and it's a tribute to the strangeness of the universe that I feel a momentary sense of nostalgia. When we manage to squeeze in closer to the theater's doors, I can see that Scorpius is surrounded by his usual groupies.  
  
"Crichton," says Scorpius, a smile lighting up his face as he extends his hand.   
  
I shake his hand, returning the grin. "Hey Scorpy, take off those sunglasses, will ya?"   
  
"Why?" asks Scorpius.  
  
"’Cause you’re freaking me out, that's why. You too," I say, nodding at Braca, who's dressed like Bond and scowling at the people eagerly absorbing every word that Scorpius says.   
  
Scorpius rolls his eyes, but takes off the glasses. "I'm glad we caught you. I was thinking that it would be fitting for the three of us to enter together."   
  
The camera clicks increase as we walk into the theater together, Aeryn's arm linked through mine, Scorpy's hand crushing my shoulder. Two cycles later, and he still doesn't know his own strength. Either that or he just gets a thrill from squeezing my shoulder into a brand new shape.   
  
Giving Aeryn a look of sympathy, Scorpius offers to deal with the reporters alone, so that we can go in to the movie theater and grab seats. Aeryn doesn't say anything, but I can feel from the way that her body relaxes that she’s relieved. Aeryn and publicity go together about as well as southern boys and space.   
  
We take seats in front of D.K. and his wife and next to my dad, who claps my already abused shoulder. "The director told me Ben Affleck is brilliant. He even cut his hair to match yours," whispers D.K.   
  
As the scenes of my partnership with Scorpius and Chiana's death roll across the screen, I squeeze Aeryn’s hands, and stand up. People let me go by without complaint, and I walk at a brisk, half jog, half run to the bathroom, where I throw up the handful of popcorn I just ate.   
  
After three years of living on gruel and bones and god-knows-what-else, sugar doesn't go down well. I can handle rotten milk and space maggot infected steaks but a handful of popcorn will send me sprinting to the toilets.   
  
Sighing, I lean my forehead against the wall. It occurs to me that besides cruelty and a taste for mind-altering substances, crappy bathrooms are the one constant of the universe.   
  
The door swings open and Aeryn strides in. "What took you so long?" I ask.  
  
"It said Men's Room, I wasn’t sure I could," she says, sitting down on the edge of a urinal, the folds of her satin dress spread across the tile floor.   
  
"It's just a movie, John," she says after a few minutes, gazing at me evenly. "Pictures. You showed me how they made them. It's not real."  
  
"It's my life, Aeryn. Sanitized and made safe for the kids, but it's still my life." I stop and grin. "I like the girl they have playing you."   
  
Now it's Aeryn’s turn to frown. "She holds her gun wrong."   
  
I laugh. "You can take the girl out of the peacekeepers, but you can't take the peacekeeper out of the girl."   
  
Aeryn's hand melts into black and I look—-  
  
  
\-- across the table. "You have to stop coming here, John," she says, meeting my eyes. "It makes the others uneasy."   
  
"You— you underwent transformation," I say, staring openly at her altered features, the metallic sheen of her skin. Her cheek bones have been flattened, her face molded into a different shape with eyes like dark coins.   
  
"It was necessary." She gestures outside, at the ice planet her race turned into a haven. "Even here, it's not safe to look Sebacean. I'm surprised you haven't done it yourself."   
  
She seems to regret that once she says it, and I know she’s remembering that Sebaceans might stand out, but being John Crichton is its own kind of notoriety.   
  
"Purple's not really my color," I reply. She drains her cup of Raslak and doesn’t look at me.   
  
It's the same thing, year in and year out, but at least this time around, time seems to have softened the edge of her anger. It's still there, humming underneath every word that she speaks and every word she bites back, but I've known all along that this was going to take more than a little vacation. The galaxy’s gone to hell in a handbasket and I'm the guy who built the basket.   
  
I understand when it's all said and done that her love is not as unconditional as mine. There are lines and there are lines, and we never did figure out how exactly they were drawn. But if she didn't love me, she wouldn't keep seeing me, year after year. Pity has never been an emotion that stayed her hand.   
  
She stands up, her uniform rustling against the table. "I have to go. There are things that need to be done."  
  
"If I could—" I start, but she cuts me off.   
  
"You can't undo what you did, John. So please, stop coming here. It can't help either of us."   
  
I could have undone it once. Before the ancients took back what was burned into my blood, but never truly mine. But if I still had the wormholes, I would have moved galaxies, given the time-space continuum the middle-finger, held onto Aeryn in any way I could. Somehow, she had to understand that.  
  
I reach for her hand, resting on the butt of her gun and she pulls away. "This is madness," she says, in the gentle tone she once reserved for our daughter.   
  
"It's love, Aeryn."  
  
She shrugs. "Call it what you want." I stand up, prepared to follow her--

  
  
\--"John?" asks Chiana, shaking my shoulder. "John, what happened?"  
  
I open my eyes and blink once, twice. I grip the controls harder, turning the module into the opening on the right.   
  
"Nothing Pip," I say, as the blue engulfs us. "Just a little turbulence."


End file.
